When the Hueys took them into a clearing in the Ia Drang Valley, the men had no idea they were heading into a fight.

They were American air cavalrymen, trained in a new kind of warfare in which the helicopter gave them mobility on the battlefield. The cavalrymen were calm and confident, far better prepared than the draftees who would be inserted willy-nilly into South Vietnam in months to come. They’d trained as a team pioneering air assault before coming to Vietnam. That day, 450 of them were deposited in the tall grass at Landing Zone X-Ray, named for the final letter in the phonetic alphabet.

On the slopes around the forested Ia Drang, far from cities, rail lines, or highways, two regiments totaling 2,000 seasoned North Vietnamese regulars, or NVA, were ready.

On the slopes around the forested Ia Drang, far from cities, rail lines, or highways, two regiments totaling 2,000 seasoned North Vietnamese regulars, or NVA, were ready.

The Hueys began landing at X-Ray at 10:48 a.m. on a bright, sunny Nov. 14, 1965. By the end of the day, 16 UH-1D helicopters made four troop lifts before the landing zone became too violent and had to be closed. The outfit was the 1/7th Cavalry, a battalion in the regiment that Gen. George Armstrong Custer had commanded during the Indian Wars.

“It started routinely. I got off the ship and stood there. I opened a can of C-Rations. Then, Taft, our platoon leader, got word on the radio to turn around and head towards a creek bed. That was when they opened up on us.”

One of the cavalrymen was an assistant machine gunner, 22-year-old Pvt. William A. “Bill” Beck, of Steelton, Pa. He may have been typical of the citizen-soldier of 1965. He had few expectations beyond getting today’s work done and finding his way back to chow and a shower.

“When I was growing up in Steelton, I never even owned a BB gun,” Beck said. “But I had an excellent mentor in Spc. 4 Russell Adams, the machine gunner. We alternated carrying the gun and hauling ammo boxes. I was six-foot-two and Russ was a small kid, about five-six, but he loved that machine gun and he was tough as nails.”

Lt. Col. Harold G. “Hal” Moore commanded the “first of the seventh.” Assistant machine gunner Beck was a member of Moore’s A Company, led by Capt. Ramon A. “Tony” Nadal. Within the company, Beck belonged to a platoon led by 1st Lt. Robert E. Taft, who stepped off a Huey at Landing Zone X-Ray in the middle of the final day of his life.

“It started routinely. I got off the ship and stood there. I opened a can of C-Rations. Then, Taft, our platoon leader, got word on the radio to turn around and head towards a creek bed. That was when they opened up on us.”

Beck and Adams were now anchoring their company’s left flank. A green-clad North Vietnamese appeared in front of the two men. Adams got off a burst of gunfire that killed the foe. Another NVA threw a concussion grenade. Beck recalled, “It exploded directly in front of me. If it had been a shrapnel grenade, it would have killed me.